Fountainhead

Large scale projections, Hanley City Library, Stoke on Trent, 1994
Commissioned by Hanley City Museum & Art Gallery, Stoke on Trent.

Fountainhead was a site specific projection event for the exterior facade of Hanley City Library. It explored the influence that an urban space could have on people’s perception and movement. It was designed with pedestrians in mind, not only as a destination but also as a visual event on the way to another place.

The library’s dimensions were used as the basis to construct a series of scaled architectural models which were photographed with a large format camera. Forty different images were projected onto the wall with each image using the outer shell of the library building as its framework.

Four different perspective points were used when photographing the models. When these images were projected, the perspective at certain points would coincide with that of the building and the illusion would be reinforced. When the perspective did not coincide, the building would either appear to be set at an angle to its horizontal plane, twist round its vertical axis or the walls would converge to form a wedge. This created a very fluid illusion which altered according to the viewer’s vantage point.